The Assessment and Risk Assessment of Children and Adolescents in Crisis.™

The Assessment and Risk Assessment of Children and Adolescents in Crisis™ is an APT-Accredited 3-day course, from one of the UK's leading providers of mental health training. We bring the training to your own organisation, for maximum cost-effectiveness, and up to 15 people can attend. (2-day version and refresher courses are also available.)

Executive Summary:

Assessing adolescents and children in crisis settings often causes professionals a lot of concern. They wonder whether they have the necessary skills, they are concerned about the potential volatility of the situation, they are unfamiliar with having another adult (the parent or carer) present and concerned, they are not sure about consent and confidentiality issues, and they are not completely sure what their role is: assessment, risk-assessment, management, or what?

This course sets out to give clear and effective advice about assessing adolescents in crisis, so professionals can feel confident in their clinical skills and confident that they are covering what is meant to be covered.

Who should attend?

All professionals who see adolescents in crisis situations, whether as their principal professional task or otherwise. Attenders include those who are used to seeing adults in crisis and want to broaden their skills to adolescents, as well as professionals who are used to seeing adolescents in routine practice and want to broaden their skills to cover crisis situations.

The Course Covers:

Forming a good Relationship quickly: Mood-Matching. In conversation, each person expects the other to 'match' their mood. But how does this work when the client is highly agitated?

Forming a good Relationship quickly: Validation. A step on from empathy, validation is a key idea for helping people talk freely about problems.

Asking Questions. Asking good questions is a key skill in helping adolescents – and their parents or carers - to talk. Getting people to talk is central in assessing their problems. Therefore asking good questions is a crucial skill to develop.

Consent and Confidentiality: the principles and practice we need to follow with adolescents.

Early assessment of psychosis (a): With psychosis, it is important to intervene with medication as early as possible, so professionals' frequent habit of 'watchful waiting' can do the patient a dis-service.

Early assessment of psychosis (b): Intervening early with adolescents who are so disturbed that they are at risk of becoming psychotic holds out the hope of preventing not only a first episode but a whole lifetime of psychosis.

Scaling Questions. Scaling questions are one of the biggest weapons you have in your armoury. They give you a measure of what is happening, and, used well, may transform the way the patient views the situation.

Helping the person to alleviate their distress. Although we may be focusing on assessment, the client expects more. It is immensely beneficial if we can quickly help adolescents find the best thing to do to alleviate their distress.

'Fixing' agreed advice. Simple cue cards and related methods are excellent for this and can make the difference between action and inaction.

Ensuring you cover all the bases that need to be covered: The use of Davies's structured interviews, with key questions for (a) for the adolescent, (b) for the parents or carers and (c) you the clinician. How do we combine our 'Structured Interview' skills with our clinical interview skills?

What the course will do for you:

You will be able to quickly form a good relationship with children, adolescents, and their parents / carers.

You will be able to ask good questions: questions which get people to talk, and to talk about important things.

You will have a checklist of all the important areas to cover, so you can be certain you are covering all the bases.

You will know of the unique importance of emerging psychosis, and the action you should take if you suspect it.

You will know how to take a measure of the problem in question, while simultaneously reducing its severity.

You will know how to reduce the distress of both the children and adolescents, and also the parents /carers.

You will have access to Davies's structured interview, and practice in using it.

What you receive as a result of attending the training:

You will be registered as having attended the course, thereby gaining APT's Level 1 accreditation, and receive a certificate to this effect. The accreditation gives you access to online resources associated with the course.

Your registration lasts indefinitely, and your accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable by sitting an online refresher which also upgrades your accreditation to APT Level 2 if you are successful in the associated online exam.

Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 100,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.

How can I access this training?

Option 1: Bring the course to your organisation:

We bring this course to your own organisation a train a group of 6-15 people for a fixed, all-inclusive fee of £4,165 plus VAT for the 3-day course, or £3,050 plus VAT for the 2-day version.

If you or a colleague are a senior professional (e.g. consultant psychologist) and have a talent for communication and teaching, then you are welcome to apply to become an APT-accredited tutor. You could then tutor the course - or your chosen modules from it - in your own organisation, under license.

This is not only a highly appropriate use of senior professionals, but it also saves your organisation the tutor-component of the fee (around 50%) each time you run it or your chosen modules.

To see the full benefits of this and to see whether you are eligible, click the button:

Downloadable information sheet:

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As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This means (i) that it contains the right amount of relevant information for its duration, and (ii) the information is presented in an engaging way, and in a way that will make it likely to be used after the course. APT verifies the accreditation by publishing the delegates' average ratings of relevance and presentation-quality for all its accredited courses. The accreditation is given value by over 100,000 professionals having attended APT courses.

Feedback Ratings.

We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last ten runnings of this course.

Average Presentation rating: 97%

Average Relevance rating: 95%

*These statistics were last updated in April 2017.

Written Feedback.

APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments The Assessment and Risk Assessment of Children and Adolescents in Crisis™ course has received.

“Very good course ... It should be mandatory for clinicians working with minors!”

“What a fantastic course – I wish all the clinicians in the Trust would have this opportunity. The knowledge and skills learnt are not only applicable to adolescents but in all other clinical settings."